You are browsing the archive for 2012 May.

Anthony McCaffrey, postdoctoral research fellow at the Center for e-Design in the Mechanical and Industrial Engineering Department, was the subject of an article in The Atlantic, one of the nation’s oldest and most respected publications.The Atlantic article continued the national coverage for the method developed by McCaffrey to enhance anyone’s problem-solving skills, especially engineers, inventors, and other innovators. McCaffrey believes his Obscure Features Hypothesis (OFH) has led to the first systematic, step-by-step approach to devising innovation-enhancing techniques for overcoming a wide range of cognitive obstacles to invention. Additional media coverage includes articles in Psych Central, Red Orbit, Science Daily, Science Codex, and a column in the San Francisco Chronicle.

McCaffrey is a cognitive psychology researcher who has studied common roadblocks to problem-solving. He recently won a two-year, $170,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to turn his technique into software with a user-friendly graphical interface. Initial users will likely be engineers.